Sensitivity to light sterile neutrino mixing parameters with KM3NeT/ORCA

Abstract

KM3NeT/ORCA is a next-generation neutrino telescope optimised for atmospheric neutrino oscillations studies. In this paper, the sensitivity of ORCA to the presence of a light sterile neutrino in a 3+1 model is presented. After three years of data taking, ORCA will be able to probe the active-sterile mixing angles θ14, θ24, θ34 and the effective angle θμe, over a broad range of mass squared difference $$ \Delta {m}_{41}^2 $$ ∆ m 41 2 ∼ [10−5, 10] eV2, allowing to test the eV-mass sterile neutrino hypothesis as the origin of short baseline anomalies, as well as probing the hypothesis of a very light sterile neutrino, not yet constrained by cosmology. ORCA will be able to explore a relevant fraction of the parameter space not yet reached by present measurements.

New oscillation and scattering constraints on the tau row matrix elements without assuming unitarity

“…We use current constraints from DeepCore [42] and Super-Kamiokande [43] on the mixing between tau neutrinos and a sterile neutrino. This constraint will improve in the future by the successors of these experiments as well as KM3NeT/ORCA [44]. 6 • Atmospheric tau appearance experiments: the sensitivity to atmospheric tau appearance comes primarily from a combination of the matter effect, the lower tau neutrino reconstructed energy, and the rising cross section due to the tau lepton's threshold [39].…”

“…The constraint will be improved in the future with more data from these experiments as well as by KM3NeT/ORCA [44] and Hyper-Kamiokande [54]. We assume these experiments find no evidence for unitary violation and use as future constraint…”

White Paper on Light Sterile Neutrino Searches and Related Phenomenology

“…First sensitivity studies have been performed using a joint binned likelihood for three samples (track, shower, and others), in which systematic uncertainties on the neutrino flux, detector response and standard oscillations were included [577]. Fig.…”

Tau neutrinos in the next decade: from GeV to EeV

“…Upcoming atmospheric experiments like IceCube-Gen2 [111] as well as by KM3NeT [112] and Hyper-Kamiokande [113] will improve this constraint. As the total MINOS+ statistics corresponds to one-year of DUNE data taking, but with DUNE, significantly better signal to background ratio is expected.…”